PCP communists accuses Portugal of once again being accomplice to war
Opposition parties started reacting even before the United States’ bombing strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities overnight.
PS Socialists said they wanted to know if the government had been notified by US authorities about the refuelling planes at Lajes Base in the Azores – and if it intended to share the reasons for this move with the major opposition parties.
At issue then was the presence of more than a dozen US Air Force refuelling planes at Lajes Air Base – used militarily by the United States under long-standing a cooperation agreement.
Whether these planes were involved in last night’s strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran is unclear, but PCP communists were in no doubt that Portugal is ‘once again’ allowing itself to be used as an ‘accomplice to war’ and ‘having its hands stained’.
Talking in Beja last night, PCP leader Paulo Raimundo said “we don’t want a repeat of the sad situation of Iraq…”
“Our country, the government of Portugal, cannot once again have its hands stained, it cannot once again be an accomplice to war, death and destruction. Not our country, not our country, no and no,” he emphasised. “For bombs, for war and for death, turn round and go back to your land, those people, go back to your land once and for all.”
Still on the subject of war, Raimundo used the moment to criticised the “cynics” and “hypocrites” who “have their hands dirty and stained with blood” and who “do nothing to end the genocide of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israel”.
Parties’ positions on the subject of the refuelling planes have been ‘changed radically’ by the fact that the US has now taken a decision in bombing Iraqi nuclear facilities, the consequences of which are still not clear.
Source material: LUSA
